With a high production breed like the Golden Comet, the amount of calcium in layer feed is often not enough, you must also provide them with a free-choice calcium source like oyster shell so they can get more calcium when they feel they need it. Feeding and Nutritionīirds like Golden Comets are bred to be high production birds, this means that we need to support them with a healthy diet! For laying hens that especially means plenty of calcium. My strategy is to have venting above where the birds perch, so that as the warm moist air rises it flows out rather than creating condensation in the shelter. The enemy is moisture, not air temperature and chickens create a lot of moisture in a closed space simply through breathing. The key is for their shelter to be both well ventilated and yet without drafts blowing directly on the birds. Most chicken breeds don't need supplemental heat in the winter. The portable fencing also allows you to move the chickens to fresh ground regularly, which keeps them from turning small areas into a dust bowl and helps prevent parasites. Even a very secure coop can be gotten into by a determined predator digging/chewing its way in overnight. Electric fencing also keeps nighttime predators from trying to get into your coop. Foxes will take birds in broad daylight! Fencing also helps keep birds close enough to their shelter that they can get undercover quickly if there are birds of prey overhead. Free-range flocks are eventually discovered by predators unless watched carefully all day. For the warmer months, I recommend portable electric net fences. I will now step on to my predator protection soapbox (I have a lot of those lying around.) Birds do require protection from predators. Advice for Chicken Keepers Predator Protection While this is fine for the average homesteader, it's much better for my business if I can provide eggs consistently throughout the year. If I waited another year, they would be of very little use as egg layers for most people and I would probably end up having to process them as stewing hens, which is pretty time consuming! The other disadvantage of a hen's second year is that they will go through a molt period for a few weeks to a month in the fall where they lay very few eggs. Why do I sell my hens after only one year of laying? This is so that when I sell them they are still productive egg layers. These hens have done a full season of laying at the farm and still have another good year of egg laying ahead of them. 1.5 year-old HensĮvery spring, I sell my older hens as the new flock comes of age and starts laying eggs. I am not planning to sell any pullets this year and will only have 1.5 year old hens available. While this makes them less able to peck and injure each other in a confined environment, it can also impact their ability to forage and we want them to be really good at that! I find that with enough space and compost to scratch through, my birds don't usually get bored enough to start picking on each other over the winter and in the summer they have an exciting life on pasture chasing bugs and scratching through cow pies! We raise our own pullets because we are pretty far from any hatcheries that sell "ready-to-lay" 16 week old pullets and also most of those barn-raised birds have the tips of their beaks removed as chicks. PulletsĮvery fall I order day old golden comet pullet (female) chicks to raise on the farm and replace our layer flock. A typical hen will lay 6-7 eggs/week during the summer and 4-5 eggs/week all winter. These hens start laying early (first egg typically at 16-18 weeks old) and lay consistently year-round. Golden comets are reliable layers of large brown eggs. If the purebred parents are also carefully bred for certain traits, you can end up with a hybrid offspring that performs better than its parents. Hybrid animals benefit from an increased genetic diversity that typically makes them grown faster and be generally healthier. This means that when they hatch the chicks are different colors (golden comet females are brown/red, males are white/yellow), which means that the birds don't have to be examined to determine if they're male or female, a process that is never 100% accurate anyway! The other reason is "hybrid vigor". Why would you want to crossbreed? One reason is that this is the only way to create "sex-link" chicks. It is a hybrid which means its parents were both purebred of different breeds, in this case it is either a New Hampshire or Rhode Island Red rooster crossed with a White Rock hen. What is a Golden Comet? This is a fancy name for a breed of red sex-link hen. *Update 12 March 2023: No hens available* Golden Comets
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